How the "Call of Suzerain" actually works

[korog]

People were complaining that Call of Suzerain was buggy, so I did some testing.

What I found out was:

When you have 0 lords, Call of Suzerain always works.

If you already have 1 lord, Call of Suzerain will never give you 2nd lord offer, unless your empire is strong. And your empire is weak in early stages of the game.

You can dismiss your existing heroes and reject new ones, Call of Suzerain keeps offering lords. If you dismiss/reject hero, it might be randomly offered again. (for example, in my test, I had 5 black mage offers.
I leveled first one to lev 3, then dismissed it. New Black Mage was offered again later, I accepted, and it was brand new level 1 black mage)


If your empire is strong enough (it happened to me after turn 70 in my casual test game), Call of Suzerain will always give you 2nd hero offer. Note: if you loose lots of units and become weaker, Call of Suzerain will stop giving you 2nd hero offer.

If you would get natural hero offer, call of suzerain might give you additional hero offer, so you will have 2 offers at the same time.

 

[Modjo]

If you already have 1 lord, Call of Suzerain will never give you 2nd lord offer, unless your empire is strong. And your empire is weak in early stages of the game.

You can dismiss your existing heroes and reject new ones, Call of Suzerain keeps offering lords. If you dismiss/reject hero, it might be randomly offered again.

Hi korog, thanks for testing that out!
just wanted to clarify something, will call of suzerain fail if you already have an active hero or a hero offer?

 

[korog]

To Modjo:

Call of Suzerain will fail if you have an active Hero.

You can stack hero offers with call of suzerain tho, I just did:

 

[Modjo]

wow so that means that if you want several heroes out of the spell, you have to wait and buy them in bulk.

That looks broken alright.

 

[player1 fanatic]

The nice thing about this is that is probably gives insight about how regular hero appearance happens also.

My guess is that spell just essentially forces regular chance for hero appearance to 100% for single turn (in cases when chance is "rolled").

This would also mean that best way to get multiple heroes in early game would be not to buy one when available, but wait for 8 turns, since that would give a chance for additional heroes to become available, during the wait time, which may not happen if hero is bought right away.

 

[korog]

This would also mean that best way to get multiple heroes in early game would be not to buy one when available, but wait for 8 turns, since that would give a chance for additional heroes to become available, during the wait time, which may not happen if hero is bought right away.

Yep I have tested this and you are right. In "normal" game, that is without the spell, It is beneficial to wait with hero buy-out, because usually another offer pops soon after that, and then you can hire both of them.

 

[player1 fanatic]

It's also a sort of flaw in game mechanics. Something non-intuitive is beneficial, and there is no in-game way feedback to give you the reason.

In fact, by getting that way more heroes early then "intended", player will feel like something is wrong with RND, since he will not get new heroes for a quite some time after that.

 

[korog]

It's also a sort of flaw in game mechanics. Something non-intuitive is beneficial, and there is no in-game way feedback to give you the reason.

In fact, by getting that way more heroes early then "intended", player will feel like something is wrong with RND, since he will not get new heroes for a quite some time after that.

I wouldn't worry about that much yet. There is also a chance that another hero does not pop up, so your first has just sat there, waiting for hire, 9 turns wasted, what could have been used clearing lairs and helping your expansion.


Right now, the right amount of randomness is what keeps hero pop-ups interesting and fresh for me. AoW3 had this dull solution of giving all players a hero the same time. In warlock terms it would be something like this:
In turn 12 all players get their first common hero offer. In turn 25 all players get their 2nd common hero, In turn 40 all players get their 1st famous hero, (and so on).

But eliminating the chance of doing badly (or very badly), you also eliminate the chance of doing exceptionally well. If you cut down randomness, at least I would want a system, where player actions (and/or map luck) would affect hero hire system.
A new resource perhaps, something like "fame"? Quests that affect it? Something else? What would be your solution?

 

[Efyian]

I'm not entirely convinced that's how it works korog.

In 1 game, I casted it 3 times before turn 30.

cast 1 - got the hero.
cast 2 - no hero
cast 3 - Re-casted asap after cast 2, and I got 2 heroes the following turn. (presumably from cast 2 and cast 3).

 

[Emfatic]

To Modjo:

Call of Suzerain will fail if you have an active Hero.

This is not acceptable to me. The spell description does not indicate a chance of failure, so I've been pretty pissed off so many times wasting time and mana casting this spell with no results. This is a bug in my opinion and I see that it is logged already in the technical thread. I expect developers to fix this. Do others agree with me?

 

[Shidan]

I can't explain why it's glitchy but there is nothing in data.xml that says it has a chance of failure. And certainly nothing looking like it tracks how "strong" you are.

<Item>
				<s_name>ev_spellSummonLord</s_name>
				<s_type>HeroCome</s_type>
				<subEvents/>
				<ip2_startTurn x="-1" y="-1"/>
				<s_startSpell>sp_arc_summon_lord</s_startSpell>
				<b_isSelfFraction>true</b_isSelfFraction>
				<s_startPreset/>
				<s_endSpell/>
				<i_countExecute>1</i_countExecute>
				<ip2_frequency x="1" y="1"/>
				<questNames/>
				<s_person/>
				<s_message/>
				<s_gameMode>NOT_SET</s_gameMode>
				<dlcs>
					<u_dlcs>1</u_dlcs>
					<entities/>
				</dlcs>
			</Item>

 

[player1 fanatic]

Probably because it's hardcoded.

This section sets chance to 100%:
<ip2_frequency x="1" y="1"/>

And this makes is happen for next turn:
<ip2_startTurn x="-1" y="-1"/>

I guess, only when chance is 'rolled', 100% setting has an effect. No roll done, no 100% chance.

And there may be some background game logic for regular hero appearance, that triggers when hero appearance is possible (>0%) or not, based on current strength and number of currently owned heroes.